My birthday last month must have triggered an alarm in the office of some public servant in Hobart because I received a letter telling me that I needed to have my doctor fill in a form to say that I am safe to drive. The receptionist at the surgery must have seen it all before and said I would need to see the nurse first and the doctor afterwards. I suspected it would be like all the oldie tests I have had before: who is the Prime Minister, say the alphabet backwards, and so on, so I practised my answers to be sure I wouldn't look like a dill.
But it wasn't like that. The nurse was one of those cheerful, talkative country girls who like to chat. She noted that Dr Flanagan had once been my doctor so was agog to tell me that he had once been the doctor at the practice in charge of vasectomies. They called him Dr Snip and said he could always identify his patients in the waiting room because they were the ones who were sweating. Interesting information, perhaps, but not what I was there for.
She took my blood pressure, checked my hearing and eyesight, and gave me a colour-blindness test, using an ancient tattered book. Google tells me that Dr Ishihara published his first test-booklet in 1911 and I reckon the book I was given was an original copy. No matter, I apparently passed and am now licensed to drive for another twelve months.
Good news is that Jamie and Nera arrived back in Tasmania this morning.
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